Pakistan and Palestine:

Or, why am I even talking about the touchiest subject on the planet?

I was thinking yesterday about how it is interesting, when the British left India there were fears from the Muslim minority there, that they would never be able to be represented in a mostly Hindu state, and so Pakistan was created, and millions and millions of people migrated one way or the other (Hindus to the right, Muslims to the left, step lively now! I jest but seriously like half a million people died while doing this). This didn't stop anybody from hating each other, but at least they each had their own country.

So then a year later or so when the British left Palestine, (as far as I can tell, so don't yell at me with your version of these events, you weren't there either. Unless you're my grandfather, in which case you really shouldn't be reading this fucking blog, Zayde) the UN proposed to make a Jewish state and an Arab state, but the Arabs were not so into that idea, so the Jews declared a state with disregard for the people already there, everybody who happened to be nearby and Arab (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq) attacked said fledgling state, but they lost, so sucks to be Arab (no state for you!), don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. And by "door" I mean "bomb" and by "ass" I mean "your entire community".

Obviously I am oversimplfying here (ya think?) but it is just interesting to think of the creation or lack thereof of these four states, each pair divided on ethnic and religious lines, each created by the British leaving and hotly contested, each beginning with an I and a P...it's downright eerie.

If there had successfully been an Arab state created in 1948, would we have some kind of détente in hostilities, two states always fighting over this disputed territority or the other (coughKashmircough) but not actually using their nuclear weapons, with less Sbarros blown up, or would we just have Hamas with nukes? Would a stable Palestine lead to another base from which to attack Israel cause Arabs and Jews will just never, ever get along, or would they have a lot less reason to blow up buses if Israel wasn't always shooting rockets at them every time a bus blew up? Would they still hate each other if they weren't always trying to kill each other? Which came first, the egg blowing up inside the chicken or the chicken rolling a tank over the eggs?

I really have no idea, especially on that last one since it doesn't even make sense, but it does make you wonder, especially since Pakistan seems to be sort of skidding off the rails right about now anyway. Maybe Israel and Palestine just need a nice, remote, mountainous region to separate them, and a little more land to spread out in. Which is why I keep recommending Montana, but who listens to me, anyway? (Answer: nobody.)